The prettiest industrial estate in England?

It’s a sunny Sunday in October and I’m pootling around Faircharm Industrial Estate with a camera.

Faircharm is a mixed use industrial estate on the edge of Aylestone Meadows, bisected by the River Soar and the Grand Union Canal.

On first appearance it’s pretty underwhelming, but carry on walking, graze your way past a muscle gym, a gymnasium and a universe-righting-itself bacon butty shop, and you get to see some good stuff, like this corking little view below.

It turns out the Faircharm estate, previously known as St Mary’s Mills, is rippling with charming and quirky buildings. It could even be the prettiest industrial estate in England. After all, they’re not generally known for their eye-pleasing nature.

The application on the city council website is for 60 houses, but the site is mixed ownership, part city council and part Northern Trust. So who knows what could happen. Especially seeing as the area is busy and brings in a lot of business rates. The building next to Gymnastics Zone, a former glaziers, is currently being turned into a climbing centre with a massive climbing wall. Which sounds encouraging to me.

Today, to the cheers of supporters watching Argentina’s World Cup rugby squad, carried on the wind from the nearby King Power, I have a good wander around and take my pics. Happily, there’s also a band practicing at a rehearsal space contained within one of the converted factories, and they’re pretty good too. Bonus.